Chapter 25

Sarah Chen

The room tilts slightly, the fluorescent lights suddenly too bright, and I grip the edge of the table to steady myself.

"My mother's assistant." My voice comes out barely audible. "Dad, why would Isabella's adopted daughter be connected to someone who worked for our family two decades ago?"

My father's face has gone the color of ash, and for a long moment he says nothing at all, his eyes fixed somewhere past the detective's shoulder like he's staring into a memory none of the rest of us can see.

"Richard." Noah's voice is careful, watching him with the same wary scrutiny I remember from the day the sibling scare first surfaced. "If there's something you know, this is the moment to say it."

"Sarah left our employment abruptly." My father's voice is hoarse, unsteady in a way I've rarely heard from him. "Around the same time your mother and I were going through our difficulties, Amara. I never made the connection before now, but the timing." He stops, pressing his fingers hard against his eyes. "The timing lines up almost exactly with when your mother came home pregnant with you."

The implication settles over the room like a physical weight, and Detective Reyes glances between us, clearly recalibrating whatever she thought this meeting was going to reveal.

"You're saying Sarah Chen might be connected to whatever happened during that separation." Julian's voice stays measured, methodical, though I can hear the tension coiled underneath it. "Which would explain why Isabella specifically referenced Amara in that note. If Sarah was somehow involved in the circumstances surrounding Amara's birth, and later gave up a child of her own that Isabella eventually adopted."

"Then Ivy might be connected to my family too." The words leave me before I fully process what they mean, my mind spinning through implications faster than I can organize them. "Not just Noah's mother covering something up. My mother's former assistant, tied to both scandals somehow."

"We're still working to locate Ms. Chen for questioning," Detective Reyes says carefully. "Our preliminary search suggests she relocated out of state shortly after the adoption was finalized and has largely stayed out of public records since. We're pursuing a current address now."

"I need to talk to her." My voice is steadier now, resolve settling in beneath the shock. "Before anyone else does. Before this becomes another headline twisted into something ugly."

"That's not standard procedure," the detective begins, but my father cuts her off, his voice regaining some of its usual authority.

"With respect, Detective, my family has spent the better part of a year being blindsided by revelations that directly affect us. I'd like my legal team present for any interview conducted with Ms. Chen, and I'd like my daughter to have the opportunity to speak with her as well, given how directly this concerns her."

Detective Reyes studies him for a long moment, then nods slowly. "I can arrange a joint interview once we locate her. I'll be in touch within forty eight hours."

The drive back to the Montgomery estate passes in near total silence, my father staring out the window with an expression I've never seen on him before, something between guilt and grief and a kind of exhausted resignation.

"Dad." I finally break the silence as we turn through the front gates. "Whatever this turns out to be, it doesn't change anything between us. I need you to know that."

"You don't know that yet, Amara." His voice cracks slightly. "If Sarah Chen is somehow connected to your birth, if there's truth buried in whatever Isabella wrote in that note, it could mean your mother and I built our entire family around a secret I never had the courage to uncover."

"Then we uncover it together." I reach across the seat and take his hand, the way he's taken mine so many times over the last year. "Whatever the truth is, I already told you once, blood was never what made you my father. I meant that then, and I mean it now."

He squeezes my hand tightly, tears gathering in his eyes that he doesn't bother hiding, and for a moment the car falls quiet except for the soft hum of the engine.

My phone buzzes as we pull up the long drive toward the house, and I glance down to see a message from Noah, sent just moments after we parted ways at the precinct.

**Noah:** Whatever this turns out to be, about your mother, about Ivy, about any of it, I want you to know I'm not going anywhere. Not this time. Let me be someone you can lean on through this, even if it's just as a friend.

I stare at the message for a long moment, something warm and unfamiliar unfurling slowly in my chest, before another message arrives directly beneath it, this one from Julian, considerably more urgent in tone.

Julian: Detective Reyes just called back. They found Sarah Chen faster than expected. She's already agreed to talk, but Amara, there's a complication. She says she'll only speak with you if Eleanor Frost's sister Margaret is in the room too. She says Margaret already knows the whole truth, and has for years.